The involvement of Rcc2 in mammalian neurogenesis

Rcc2 is a Rac guanine nucleotide exchange factor recently identified as a principal signaling component of integrin adhesion complexes that also plays a central role in the completion of mitosis and cytokinesis. Rcc2 mRNA is enriched in a class of neural progenitors in the ventricular zone, short neural precursors. Although Rcc2 mRNA is present at high levels in the ventricular zone during neurogenesis, the impact of Rcc2 on cortical development has not been previously studied. We used two methods to study the role of Rcc2 in vivo. First we isolated a portion of the upstream regulatory region of Rcc2 and used it to express a fluorescent protein. Additionally, we used an shRNA targeting Rcc2 to knockdown expression of Rcc2.We found that the promoter region of Rcc2 labeled cells that were near the board of the ventricular zone and subventricular zone, and tended to be positive for Sox2 but not Tbr2, when compared to the general progenitor population. Progenitors electroporated with Rcc2 shRNA were closer to the ventricular surface than those with functioning Rcc2. Examination of the cell cycle in cells electroporated with Rcc2 shRNA indicated no difference to those with Rcc2.We found that Rcc2 was active during neurogenesis in ventricular zone progenitors. Additionally, our analysis shows that Rcc2 may be involved in the migration of progenitors during neurogenesis. Further works needs to be done to further elucidate the role of Rcc2.